I wanted to note two points about possible Trump defenses that haven’t so much been ignored by legal experts as perhaps simply assumed and thus left unstated. It’s worth stating them explicitly.

In recent weeks I’ve written a number of posts looking at the possible schedule of Trump’s various criminal trials next year. (We now have three cases of the four we’ve expected. The fourth in Atlanta is likely to come this month.) In those posts either I or readers have suggested either that the January 6th case is likely to come after the Mar-a-Lago documents case or that neither trial is likely to be held prior to the 2024 presidential election. But several recent events — most but not all of which we learned about yesterday — throw those assumptions into some doubt.

We’re going to have two episodes of the podcast out today. Kate Riga is on vacation this week, so last week we recorded this week’s episode with the expectation that the indictment would come down before it aired today. That episode is looking at the full range of criminal and civil cases that will be unfolding for Donald Trump in 2024. Again, we recorded it assuming this indictment was going to happen. Because it has happened, Josh Kovensky and I recorded a special instapod this morning about the new indictments themselves. That episode will show up first in your podcast feed and be followed later in the day by the regular pod with Kate and me.

I want to go back to something I noted earlier. The American Republic and the Constitution that sets out its rules and structure are the anchor of the law and the rule of law in this country. Attempts to overthrow the government, to overthrow the Constitution, are the gravest crimes since they challenge the basis of every other law. Murder may come with a stiffer sentence, but attempts to overthrow the Republic itself is still a graver offense.

I don’t have too much to add to the widely expected and yet still historic indictment revealed just moments ago. Our team is poring over the document as I write. No President, really no politician in American history has committed a series of crimes of the magnitude of those committed by Donald Trump in the final months of his presidency from November 2020 into January of 2021. While very serious, the documents case in Mar-a-Lago pales in comparison. Certainly the felony case in New York state pales in comparison. The probable indictments in Georgia are likely of comparable consequence. Indeed, they appear to be part of the same broad conspiracy that is being charged today. No crime, no violation of the law can be more consequential or grave than one that seeks to overthrow the basis of the law itself, which is to say, to overthrow the federal constitution and the state itself.

I wanted to follow up on my post below about this new Times/Siena poll. A number of you wrote in and made some of the following points. One was, isn’t it a mistake to be making much of anything about a poll almost 18 months before the election. Others pointed more generally to recent polling failures and more specifically to the fact that actual elections since Dobbs have showed Democrats overperforming both with respect to past elections and with regards to polls. One reader even noted that the Times/Siena poll was one of those which helped feed the “Red Wave” frenzy in 2022. That last point is I think only partly true. But the part that is true is worth keeping in mind.

In any case, these are all points well-taken. In general my aim in that post and other similar ones at this point in the campaign cycle is not to prognosticate but to look for vulnerabilities. We should always be on the lookout for facts or at least data that complicate our assumptions.

There’s a bit of a collective freakout this morning, at least in some quarters, about a new Times/Siena poll showing a tied race (link to crosstabs) between President Biden and Donald Trump in a 2024 rematch — a rematch which as we’ve discussed is almost a certainty. They’re currently tied at 43%. The upshot is that this shows a closer race than the 2020 election and, in the words of Times polling guru Nate Cohn, “to the extent the survey suggests a slightly closer race than four years ago, it appears mostly attributable to modest Trump gains among Black, Hispanic, male and low-income voters.” These days when a media organization invests in a big poll they really go to town with it, producing multiple articles. Here’s Cohn’s take on it. Here’s another focusing on the fact that Biden has consolidated Democratic support significantly since last year.

I’m still working through these numbers. But I wanted to share a few reactions and perhaps an outline guide to making sense of them.

In line with our recent theme, the Times is out today with a poll that is absolutely devastating for Ron DeSantis. But in truth it is devastating for every Republican candidate not named Donald Trump. It is only devastating for DeSantis inasmuch as he is the only candidate who appears to be in the race at all rather than running what amounts to a novelty or lifestyle campaign. According to the Times/Siena Poll, nationwide Trump has 54% of Republicans supporting him compared to 17% for DeSantis. The next five runners-up either have 2% or 3%. As I said, in practical terms, they’re not even in the race.

Is the fractured field preventing DeSantis from breaking through? Not really. If all the other candidates dropped out and gave DeSantis a clear one-on-one matchup, Trump would still be disemboweling him by a 62% to 31% margin.

I want to recommend you listen to this interview Josh Kovensky did with Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar. It’s very interesting stuff. We’re going to be doing more podcast interviews in addition to the weekly episode Kate Riga and I do. That weekly episode will continue with the same format. So I want to encourage you to check out all of these new episodes. But this is a recommendation especially about this episode. It gave me a lot of new insight into Vladimir Putin’s obsession both with the U.S. and with Ukraine and how the two intersect, long before the triangular relationship between these three countries became such a central feature of U.S. politics. Much of it I knew in a very general outline. But many details were knew to me, as was the discussion of Putin’s relationship with George W. Bush and how the collapse of Bush’s domestic support and eventual departure from the White House was a prelude to what came after. Really fascinating stuff.

If you subscribe to the podcast through whatever service you use it will be in your feed. If you don’t subscribe, please subscribe. And if podcasts aren’t your thing you can listen to it on the site right here.

We hear a lot about Joe Biden’s age. And it’s not just Republicans endlessly going to town with out of context videos or clips of Biden looking down momentarily. When I talk to civilians — by which I mean people not immersed in the daily scrum of news and politics and all the commitments that go with it — they often tell me something like, “I like Biden. But I am concerned about his age.” 

So it’s an issue. It’s certainly an issue at the level of perception. And there’s simply zero question that Biden is a much older man that he was when he was Vice President. That’s true in the obvious chronological sense, as it is for all of us. But it’s true in a more specific one as well. Nancy Pelosi is two years older than Biden. You can see some signs of age in her face. Her skin is a bit more drawn. But overall she doesn’t seem much different to me than she did a decade ago. Age affects everyone differently. That’s literally life.

But you know what? Get over it.